Sparrow updated with new features, Push Notification to be implemented via yearly subscriptions

Sparrow, the best 3rd party mail app on the iPhone, has been updated with 4 new features. First up is Message Navigation, where you can now swipe up and down between messages (previously only conversions were supported). When moving between messages, you’ll clearly see the email’s subject heading, whereas in conversions, the person’s name will be displayed. Also new in the 1.2 update: compose emails in landscape mode, edit and create folder/labels from within the app and support for 9 total languages, including French, German, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Dutch, Russian and Chinese. As for the issue with Push Notifications, it appears that Apple will not grant the Sparrow team an exception to use the VoIP API for notifications. From the Sparrow blog:

You were more than 16 000 helping us on our Apple quest to get the VoIP privilege. We can’t thank you enough for your support. Unfortunately, Apple has confirmed that they are not willing to do any exception to the rule and that Sparrow will NOT be granted with the privilege.

This means we’ll have to do Push on our side and that it will be integrated as a yearly subscription into Sparrow’s future update.

Personally, I wouldn’t mind paying for the ability to have push on Sparrow. No word on how much this yearly subscription will cost or when it will drop exactly, but if I had to guess, I’d say $12/year (0.99 per month basically) is pretty reasonable. Of course, if you’re already jailbroken, you can enable Push for free with the Cydia tweak Sparrow Push.